Leveraging Participatory Design and User Experience Methods to Collaboratively Envision an Inclusive, User-centered Writing and Design Lab

Abstract

This article presents findings from a user-experience (UX) participatory design study informing the design of a new university writing and design lab. For this qualitative, mixed-methods study, we collected digital survey responses from 80 students and 17 faculty, conducted semi-structured interviews with 15 faculty, facilitated UX design sprints with 15 students, organized experiential learning projects for prototyping with 5 unique sections of undergraduate courses, and conducted user testing of the writing lab website with 40 participants. By sharing our mixed-methods research design, participatory design processes, data collection insights, and findings, we provide an example of how diverse stakeholders with competing needs can be brought together to collectively ideate human-centered design solutions that are accessible, usable, equitable, and inclusive for end users.